How Deeply Does Art Move You?
Noticing beauty, being moved by it, and making it yourself
Two people can stand in front of the same painting and have completely different afternoons. One reads the label and moves on; the other feels the floor tilt. Psychologists who study aesthetics found that this responsiveness has three parts that do not always travel together: noticing and appreciating beauty, being overwhelmed by it, and making art yourself. This test scores all three.
Before you start There are no right answers. Pick what is usually true for you, not what sounds best.
Think about art in the widest sense - music, film, books, buildings, design, nature - and about how you usually respond, not how you think you should.
What it measures
The three factors of the Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment: aesthetic appreciation, intense aesthetic experience, and creative behaviour. Unlike the creativity test on this site, which asks where you are creative, this one asks how strongly beauty and art reach you, with making art as only one of the three parts.
Based on: Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment - AReA (Schlotz et al., 2021)
Possible results
Aesthetic appreciation
How much you notice and seek out beauty in art, design and the world around you.
Intense aesthetic experience
How strongly art moves you - chills, tears, losing track of time.
Creative behaviour
How often you make art yourself, for the pleasure of it.
Common questions
Is aesthetic sensitivity the same as being creative?
No. Creativity is about producing new ideas or things; aesthetic responsiveness is about how strongly beauty and art reach you. This scale includes making art as one of three parts, but plenty of people are deeply moved by music they could never play. The creativity test on this site looks at where you create, not at how you respond.
Why does music give some people chills?
Chills tend to arrive at moments of surprise or release - a sudden change in volume, a new voice coming in, a long-awaited resolution. They generally feel rewarding, and people vary a lot in how often they get them; some research links this more often to people who are especially open to new experience.
Is this the same as being a highly sensitive person?
They overlap, but they are not the same. The sensitivity test on this site measures how strongly you react to stimulation in general, including stress, noise and busy places; this one focuses only on responses to beauty and art. You can be moved to tears by music without being overwhelmed by a crowded room, and the reverse.
Sources
- Schlotz, W., Wallot, S., Omigie, D., Masucci, M. D., Hoelzmann, S. C., & Vessel, E. A. (2021). The Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment (AReA): A screening tool to assess individual differences in responsiveness to art in English and German. Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts. doi:10.1037/aca0000348
- Silvia, P. J., Rodriguez-Boerwinkle, R. M., Awa, K. N., Zabelina, D. L., & Christensen, A. P. (2025). Evaluating the structure of the Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment (AReA) with bootstrap exploratory graph analysis. Empirical Studies of the Arts. doi:10.1177/02762374241259935
An honest note The questions are Quinthea's own wording adapted from the Aesthetic Responsiveness Assessment, so scores are not comparable with its published norms. The scale is recent: it was built with adults in the United States and Germany, and a later English-language study confirmed the three parts but not every item. Questions about art also reflect opportunity - money, schooling and where you live - as much as sensitivity. A low score is not a verdict on your taste.
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